Instagram Well-being: Fundraiser Amplification

The Problem 01/03

High intent, high friction

Gen-pop users had the least engagement with Instagram fundraisers — but when we dug into why, we found something surprising: supporting creators was actually their biggest stated reason for being on the platform. The problem wasn't motivation, it was the ask. Donating money was a step too far for most people, and there was no lighter-weight way to show support.

The question became: if donating is too much friction for most users, how might we let people participate in something they genuinely care about — without requiring them to open their wallets?

What I asked in research

To understand where the real opportunity was, I ran research with both creators and supporters focused on three questions:

How do people feel about the difference between supporting a fundraiser versus donating to it — and does that distinction matter to them?
When sharing support publicly, do people want to highlight the creator's name, the nonprofit, or the fundraiser itself?
Do creators want control over who can amplify their fundraiser, and how?

The Approach 02/03

What research taught us

For both creators and supporters, monetary goals were less important than we assumed. What mattered was the sense of involvement — actually supporting a cause by making it physically part of your profile gave the community a feeling of being part of something bigger than their own feed.

This reframed the design problem entirely. The feature didn't need to drive donations — it needed to lower the barrier to visible participation, and let that participation become its own form of social signal.

What I designed

Two interconnected concepts came out of research:

Fundraiser bio links — the ability to add a creator's fundraiser directly to your own Instagram bio, making support visible on your profile without requiring a donation.
The "Supporter" concept — a new participation identity for fundraisers that sat between passive viewer and active donor, giving people a recognized role in a campaign without a financial commitment.

Together, these created a new participation layer for fundraisers — one that expanded the funnel rather than just optimizing the existing one.

The Outcome 03/03

The numbers

The results significantly exceeded expectations:

353% increase in fundraiser views — with only 35% attributable to notifications, meaning organic discovery and sharing drove the rest
+40K monthly active donors, representing 50% of the full-year 2021 goal achieved from this single feature
+1,400 donations per day
13% of all supporters converted to donors — validating the hypothesis that lowering the participation barrier actually increased the donation rate, not decreased it

Why it mattered

The most meaningful result wasn't the donation numbers — it was the supporter-to-donor conversion rate. The bet was that if we gave people a lower-friction way to participate, some of them would move up the funnel on their own. That's exactly what happened.

It demonstrated that reducing the barrier to engagement doesn't cannibalize higher-value actions — it creates a pipeline for them. That finding informed how the team thought about participation mechanics across other well-being and creator features.

Key Decisions

Lower the barrier instead of optimizing the funnel

The conventional approach would have been to optimize the existing donation flow. Instead, research showed that the real opportunity was creating a new, lighter-weight participation layer. The bet: if you give people an easier way to engage, some will naturally move up to donating. The 13% conversion rate proved this right.

Participation as social signal

Research revealed that for both creators and supporters, monetary goals mattered less than the sense of involvement. This reframed the design entirely — the feature didn't need to drive donations, it needed to make participation visible. Bio links and the "Supporter" identity turned engagement into its own form of social proof.